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My new inverter fails and starts continously while heating a RV Water Heating. Water heater is 120ac and 10 amps. BMV-712 says it's 1700watts, and current is 144amps. SOC is 94 percent when I I turned on my water heater SOC was 100% and Batteries we're at 13.30 charge
I have 2 Battleborn Lifepro4 batteries
Checked all my wiring and double checked.
I have only allowed it to shut down and start 4 times for fear of ruining it.
Check the voltage at the terminals of the inverter when the water heater is on. It may just be a bad connection or under sized wires to the inverter causing a low voltage reset. I run my water heater with only a 1500 watt inverter and the water heater is 1450 watts. Voltage drop for me is about .7 volts.
Chedrick, I checked and normal AC voltage and it is 120, and when I turn the water heater on drops to 117 volts. I do have 8awg to my service panel. Any other suggestions?
Chedrick, today I replaced my anode in the waterheater, and flushed it out the best I could with my RV pump and hose, probably not the best job but it's all I had to work with. Afterwards I fired it up and it stayed on longer without failing, however my state of charge went from 100% to 75% in less then 10 minutes, and voltage dropped in minutes also, which concerns me. But your thoughts on if it could be the water heater just drawing to much?
If anyone out there is familiar with my issues, please please let me know. I would like to depend on this more then I can. Suburban doesnt show any specs on this SW6DEL water heater, but its suppose to be 120 ac volts and 10 amps. If I am consuming 1750watts, something is wrong.
Chedrick, here is what I have at the batteries, my inverter and my panel. Batteries the volts are 12.77 inverter 12.28 and the DC wires at my service panel in the RV
The Multiplus 12/2000/80 is rated for a continuous output of 1600 Watt (@25°C). So that might explain the inverter fail with your load.
Hi Keith,
All specifications are listed in the product datasheets:
Food for thought.
I also heated hot water with a inverter and a ac heating element at 1400 watts the inverter handled it fine but it was just to hard on the batteries if the sun wasn't shining. So I used a ac varible speed motor control to lower the wattage and that worked great by lowering the wattage to 300 watts with the speed control much much easier on battery. Solar panels easily handle that on a cloudy day. And i heat a tank of hot water every 3 hours. Sunny days i just crank the speed controller up to a point that batteries charge and i still get plenty of hot water.
The only thing i didnt like was my inverter has a 4 amp idle drain on batteries so all night i wasted to much power..... older inverter . Now i installed a 300 watt dc heating element and dont need inverter even on for hot water. I could have went with a bigger dc heating element and used a dc motor speed control but 300 watts @ 3 tanks of hot water a day is more than enough hot water for the 2 of us a day.
You have options and heating elements come in all kinds of watts ac or dc. Just have to decide what is best for you.
I also think the problem is to smal inverter.
If this is still and on-going issue, and aside from the system wiring, and specifications of your installed system components, I would suggest changing out the electric water heater element (not the anode rod), and replace with a 1000 watt element. Typically, RV water hearters come with a 1500 watt element.
Thank you for this question. I will now abandon my desire to use a 2000w Victron unit and now go with a 3000w Victron. :)
